The Political Economy of Status Competition: Sumptuary Laws in Preindustrial Europe

Desierto, Desiree; Koyama, Mark

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3537889

Cited by 3 publications

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“…For example, legislation in England in 1363 notes that the lower orders were now dressing in finer and more colorful clothes. Desierto and Koyama (2020) examine this systematically using newly collected data on sumptuary legislation and a formal model. Their model rationalizes sumptuary legislation as an attempt by elites to repress status competition from below.…”

Section: Was the Plague A "Great Leveler"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Their model rationalizes sumptuary legislation as an attempt by elites to repress status competition from below. Desierto and Koyama (2020) then use data on plague reoccurrences as a proxy for local income shocks and find evidence for a relationship between incomes and the adoption of sumptuary laws. Sumptuary laws can be viewed as one political/institutional response to the economic consequences of the plague.…”

Section: Was the Plague A "Great Leveler"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Economic Impact of the Black Death

Jedwab

Johnson

Koyama

2022

Journal of Economic Literature

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The Black Death was the largest demographic shock in European history. We review the evidence for the origins, spread, and mortality of the disease. We document that it was a plausibly exogenous shock to the European economy and trace out its aggregate and local impacts in both the short run and the long run. The initial effect of the plague was highly disruptive. Wages and per capita income rose. But, in the long run, this rise was only sustained in some parts of Europe. The other indirect long-run effects of the Black Death are associated with the growth of Europe relative to the rest of the world, especially Asia and the Middle East (the Great Divergence), a shift in the economic geography of Europe toward the northwest (the Little Divergence), the demise of serfdom in western Europe, a decline in the authority of religious institutions, and the emergence of stronger states. Finally, avenues for future research are laid out. (JEL N13, N30, N43, J10, I12, I14, I30)

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Section: Was the Plague A "Great Leveler"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Was the Plague A "Great Leveler"?mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economic Impact of the Black Death

Jedwab

Johnson

Koyama

2022

Journal of Economic Literature

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Markets and communities: the social cost of the meritocracy

Carvalho

2021

Journal of Institutional Economics

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Critiques of the meritocracy have centered on its narrow definition and biased assessment of merit, its stigmatization of the unsuccessful, and excessive competition. This paper identifies a different mechanism that could have pernicious social and political consequences. Economic mobility sorts people based on certain ‘productive’ traits, separating them into classes, and thus alters social externalities. This sorting–separation–externalities mechanism can produce between-class polarization in social outcomes (e.g. alcoholism and drug abuse) and worsen aggregate outcomes over all classes, consistent with rising ‘deaths of despair’ in the United States (Case and Deaton, 2020, Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press). When traits are endogenous, transition out of a caste-based society produces an initial burst of economic mobility which dissipates over time. Thus, a dynamic meritocratic society devolves into a static class-based society. I set out an alternative model called the ‘experimental society’, which is less susceptible to these problems.

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